Microsoft Moving From Silverlight To HTML5

Microsoft is reportedly moving away from its Silverlight technology to favour HTML5.

The company had launched Silverlight in the hopes of competing with Adobe's Flash as the preferred application building platform. However Microsoft is now hailing HTML5 as the one true cross-platform Rich Internet Application platform.

HTML5 is emerging fast in the developer circles owing to the massive push it received from Apple after it mandated that iOS application had to be built on HTML5 instead of Flash. Silverlight, on the other hand, will be the platform of choice on Windows Phone.

Bob Muglia, the head of Microsoft's server and tools business, said in a statement to tech news site ZDNet: “Silverlight will continue to be a cross-platform solution, working on a variety of operating system/browser platforms, going forward. But HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform.”

The news should worry Adobe as even Apple's most bitter rivals are siding with it on HTML5.